6 million children stuck in child labour — report

More than six million children in Uganda aged between five and 17 are engaged in hazardous and exploitative work that puts their lives in jeopardy, a new report by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) has revealed.

This kind of work is commonly referred to as child labour.

Child labour threatens the health, safety, physical growth and mental development of children.

Children constitute 60% (25.2 million) of Uganda’s 42.9 million population. However, 40% (6.2 million) of these are engaged in child labour.

This excludes household chores, according to the UBOS report The National Labour Force Survey that was conducted last year.

Presenting findings to various stakeholders at the Kampala Serena Hotel last week, Michael Ogen, a principal statistician at UBOS, said trends in child labour particularly increased among children aged five to 11 years (58%) in 2021 from 55%, according to 2019/2020’s Uganda National Household Survey.

He also said boys constituting 40.9% were more exploited than their female counterparts (38%).

Children in rural settings are subjected more to child labour (42.3%) compared to their counterparts in urban areas (31.8%).

“Many children are engaged in work that they should not be doing. This hinders their normal growth because it affects them emotionally and psychologically,” Ogen said, adding that this calls for an urgent policy priority.

Children are considered child labourers if they are aged five to 11 years and are at work or are aged 12-13 years doing hard labour or working beyond 14 hours a week.

They are also child labourers if they are aged 14-17 years and are involved in hazardous forms of labour or working for an equivalent of 43 hours in a week or beyond.

For children five to 14 years, the additional criterion may be added of working beyond 21 hours in household chores.

By sub-region, Karamoja reported the highest number of children engaged in child labour at 55.6%. This is followed by Lango, Elgon, Busoga, Acholi, Buganda North, Ankole, West Nile, Bunyoro, Kigezi, Tooro, Teso, Bukedi, Buganda South and Kampala, with the least numbers at 19.4%.

Th report also highlighted about 37.7% of orphans that are engaged in child labour.

Damon Wamara, the executive director of Uganda Child Rights NGO Network, said: “We should worry as a country because if the trends continue, we shall have children that have never had the opportunity to go to school, and this will hamper our efforts to eradicate poverty.”

Wamara said the figures are as a result of the stocks that were brought about by COVID-19. He, therefore, proposed that government deliberately comes up with post-COVID-19 programmes to get children back to school.

He emphasised that the private sector be held accountable since majority of them employ the children.

The state minister for the elderly, Gidudu Mafwabi, who launched the report on behalf of Betty Amongi, the Minister of Gender, Labour and Social Development, said child labour is criminal and unacceptable.

He, however, admitted that there was need to improve monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to bring those engaging children in child labour to book.

Sh711b lost

Statistics from the gender ministry indicate that Uganda loses about sh711b to child abuse annually.

Mondo Kyateka, the commissioner of youth and children affairs at the gender ministry, said whereas this money could be used to better service delivery, government has had to pay the price of adults mistreating children in various communities.

Child abuse, according to UNICEF, can be physical, emotional or sexual and in many cases, children suffer at the hands of the people they trust.